The main goal of this blog is to think about the darkest time of our history until now: the Holocaust, the Nazi cruelty against the Humanity. //
El principal objetivo de este blog es hacer reflexionar sobre la época más oscura de nuestra historia hasta ahora: el Holocausto, la barbarie Nazi, enemiga de la Humanidad.

martes, 27 de agosto de 2013

TESTIMONY ENTERED AS EVIDENCE IN THE MEDICAL CASE[from National Archives Record Group 238, M887]

Father Miechalowski, a Roman Catholic Priest, was arrested along with other Polish priests by the Germans after the invasion of Poland in 1939. He was deported to the Sachsenhausen camp, north of Berlin, and in 1940 was transferred to Dachau concentration camp near Munich, Germany. While in Dachau, Father Miechalowski was selected against his will as a subject for medical experiments. He was intentionally infected with Malaria so that various compounds could be tested. Further, he was subjected to hypothermia experiments. American forces liberated Dachau in April 1945. On December 21, 1946, Father Miechalowski testified for the prosecution at the Doctors Trial about the medical experiments before an American military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.

Excerpts from the testimony ofFATHER LEO MIECHALOWSKIBorn March 22, 1909, in Babrzezne, Poland

Q:

Now, father, will you tell the Tribunal just what happened when you were experimented on with malaria? That is, when it happened and how you happened to be selected?

A:

I was that weak that I fell down on the road because everybody was hungry in the camp. I wanted to be transferred to another assignment later on where we got some bread to eat between meals so my health could improve by the additional food. One man arrived and selected about thirty people for some easy labor. I also wanted to be selected for this assignment and those who had been selected for this work were led away. We went in the direction where the work was located and at the very last moment instead of going to the place of work we were lead to the camp hospital. We did not know what was going to be done with us there. I thought to myself that perhaps this was going to be some detail for easier work in the hospital. We were told that we should undress and after we had undressed ourselves our numbers were taken down and then we asked what was going on and they told us, smilingly, "this is for air detail." But we were not told what was going to be done with us. Then the doctor came and told us all to remain and that we were to be x-rayed. Now that our numbers had already been taken down we were supposed to go to our blocks. I sat for two days in the block and afterwards I was again called to the hospital and there I was given malaria in such a manner that there were little cages with infected mosquitoes and I had to put my hand on one of the little cages and a mosquito stung me and afterwards I was still in the hospital for five weeks. However, for the time being no symptoms of the disease showed themselves. Somewhat later, I don't exactly recall, two or three weeks, I had my first malaria attack. Such attacks recurred frequently and several medicines were given to us for against malaria. I was given such medicine as neo-salvasan. I was given two injections of quinine. On one occasion I was given atabrine and the worst was that one time when I had an attack, I was given so-called perifer. I was given nine injections of that kind, one every hour and that every second day through the seventh injection. All of a sudden my heart felt like it was going to be torn out. I became insane. I completely lost my language — my ability to speak. This lasted until evening. In the evening a nurse arrived and wanted to give me the eighth injection. I was then unable [sic] to speak and I told the nurse about all of the complications I had had and that I did not want to receive the injection. The nurse had already poured out the injection and said that he would report this to Dr. Schilling. After approximately ten minutes another nurse arrived and said that he would have to give me the injection after all. Then I said the same thing again, that I was not going to have the injection. However, he told me that he had to carry out that order. Then I replied that no matter what order he had, I would not be willing to commit suicide. Then he went away and returned once again after ten minutes. He told me, "I know you know what can happen if you don't accept the injection." Then I said in spite of everything, "I refuse to receive a another injection and that I would tell that to the professor. "I requested that he himself know that I would not be willing to receive the injection. So that the nurse would not have any further difficulty after twenty minutes Dr. Ploettner came with four inmate nurses and he talked to my comrades. "There is going to be a big row here." Then I said, "If I have resisted for such a long time I will continue to do so." Dr. Ploettner, however, was very quiet. He only reached for my hand and he check my pulse, then touched my head and asked me what complications I had had. I told him what I had had after that injection. And then he told the nurse to give me two tablets in order to remove the headache and the pains in my kidneys. When I had been given that Dr. Ploettner was about to leave and told the nurses that they were to give me the rest of the injections. Then I said, "Hauptsturmfuehrer, I refuse to be given that injection." The physician turned around after I had said that and looked at me and said, "I am responsible for your life, not you." then when the injection he told the nurse — the nurses complied with his order and it was then they gave me this injection. It was the same one to whom I had previously told that I did not want to have another injection. It was only strange that after the eighth injection no results happened as they had done previously so that, in my opinion, I think that the nurse gave me some other injection. On the morning I was given the ninth injection — when I woke up in the morning the results were then as usual. I became sick and I began to feel cold and I had a high fever.

Q:

Father, do I understand you to say that you were injected with malaria in the middle of 1942?

A:

It was approximately in the middle of 1942 when I was infected with malaria.

Q:

And you were not asked your consent to the malaria experiment?

A:

No. I was not asked for my consent.

Q:

And you did not volunteer for this experiment?

A:

No. I was taken in the manner which I have just described.

Q:

Did you make any protest?

A:

In 1942 it was very difficult in the camp to lodge any protest. When I protested with this eighth injection which I was to be given, I clearly realized that it would have the most serious consequences for me. Later on such things could be risked, but in that year I still think that I would have been unable to do that, and I don't think it would have been to any avail.

Q:

Now how many people were experimented on with you, that is, malaria experiments?

A:

In the hospital when I had my attacks, there were approximately fifty to sixty people; the numbers changed.

Q:

And do you know the approximate total number of inmates experimented on with malaria in Dachau?

A:

Towards the end I heard that approximately one thousand two hundred prisoners were subjected to these experiments.

Q:

Do you know whether or not any of those inmates died as a result of the malaria experiments?

A:

Several have died, but if this was the direct result of malaria, I do not know. I know of one case when the patient died after having been given Perifere injections. Then I still know another priest who died, but afterwards — and prior to his death he was sent to another room.

Q:

Was it customary to transfer patients out of the block in which there were conducting the malaria experiments if it appeared that they might die?

A:

It looked to me as if this patient of whom I have just spoken had been moved for the reason so it could not be seen that it happened in the case of malaria, but I do not know if people died as a result of malaria because I am not an expert on the subject.

Q:

How many recurrences of malaria fever did you have, Father?

A:

I cannot give you the exact number any more. However, those attacks recurred frequently, I think about five times, and then I still had treatment in bed for some time, and then there were several more, and altogether I had ten attacks, one every day. Then I reached a temperature of 41.6.

Q:

Do you still suffer any effects from the malaria?

A:

I still have had some after effects, but I do not know if this is only of malaria because I was also subjected to another experiment.

Q:

Well, will you tell the tribunal about this other experiment?

A:

During those malaria attacks on one occasion I was called by Dr. Prachtol and I was examined by a Polish physician, and Dr. Prachtol told me, "If I have any use for you, I will call you." However, I did not know what was going to be done with me. Several days later, that was on the seventh of October, 1942, a prisoner came and told me that I was to report to the hospital immediately. I thought I was going to be examined once more, and I was taken through the malaria station to block 5 in Dachau, to the fourth floor of block 5. There — the so-called aviation room, the aviation experimental station was located there, and there was a fence, a wooden fence so that nobody could see what was inside, and I was led there, and there was a basin with water and ice which floated on the water. There were two tables, and there were two apparatus on there. Next to them there was a heap of clothing that consisted of uniforms, and Dr. Prachtol was there, two officers in Air Force uniforms. However, I do not know their names. Now I was told to undress. I undressed and I was examined. The physician then remarked that everything was in order. Now wires had been taped to my back, also in the lower rectum. Afterwards I had to wear my shirt, my drawers, but then afterwards I had to wear one of the uniforms which were lying there. Then I had also to wear a long pair of boots with cat's fur and one aviator's combination. And afterwards a tube was put around my neck and was filled with air. And afterwards the wires which had been connected with me — they were connected to the apparatus, and then I was thrown into the water. All of a sudden I became very cold, and I began to tremble. I immediately turned to those two men and asked them to pull me out of the water because I would be unable to stand it much longer. However, they told me laughingly, "Well, this will only last a very short time." I sat in this water, and I had — and I was conscious for one hour and a half. I do not know exactly because I did not have a watch, but that is the approximate time I spent there.

During this time the temperature was lowered very slowly in the beginning and afterwards more rapidly. When I was thrown into the water my temperature was lowered very slowly in the beginning and afterwards more rapidly. When I was thrown into the water my temperature was 37.6. then the temperature became lower. Then I only had 33 and then as low as 30, but then I already became somewhat unconscious and every fifteen minutes some blood was taken from my ear. After having sat in the water for about half an hour, I was offered a cigarette, which, however, I did not want to smoke. However, one of those men approached me and gave me the cigarette, and the nurse who stood near the basin continued to put this cigarette into my mouth and pulled it out again. I managed to smoke about half of this cigarette. Later on I was given a little glass with Schnaps, and then I was asked how I was feeling. Somewhat later still I was given one cup of Grog. This Grog was not very hot. It was rather luke warm. I was freezing very much in this water. Now my feet were becoming as rigid as iron, and the same thing applied to my hands, and later on my breathing became very short. I once again began to tremble, and afterwards cold sweat appeared on my forehead. I felt as if I was just about to die, and then I was still asking them to pull me out because I could not stand this much longer.

Then Dr. Prachtol came and he had a little bottle, and he gave me a few drops of some liquid out of this bottle, and I did not know anything about this liquid. It had a somewhat sweetish taste. Then I lost my consciousness. I do not know how much longer I remained in the water because I was unconscious. When I again regained consciousness, it was approximately between 8 and 8:30 in the evening. I was lying on a stretcher covered with blankets, and above me there was some kind of an appliance with lamps which were warming me.

In the room there was only Dr. Prachtol and two prisoners. Then Dr. Prachtol asked me how I was feeling. Then I replied, "First of all, I feel very exhausted, and furthermore I am also very hungry." Dr. Prachtol had immediately ordered that I was to be given better food and that I was also to lie in bed. One prisoner raised me on the stretcher and he took me under his arm and he led me through the corridor to his room. During this time he spoke to me, and he told me, "Well you do not know what you have even suffered." And in the room the prisoner gave me half a bottle of milk, one piece of bread and some potatoes, but that came from his own rations. Later on he took me to the malaria station, block 3, and there I was put to bed, and the very same evening a Polish prisoner — it was a physician; his first name was Dr. Adam, but I do not remember his other name — He came on official orders. He told me, "Everything that has happened to you is a military secret." You are not to discuss it with anybody. If you fail to do so, you know what the consequences will be for you. You are intelligent enough to know that." Of course, I fully realized that I had to keep quiet about that.

On one occasion I had discussed these experiments with one of my comrades. One of the nurses found out about this and he came to see me and asked me if I was already tired of living, because I was talking about such matters. But, in the way these experiments were conducted, I do not need to add anything further to it.

Q:

How long was it before you recovered from the effects of those freezing experiments?

A:

It took a long time. I also have had several (pause) I have had a rather weak heart and I have also had severe headaches, and I also get cramps in my feet very often.

Q:

Do you still suffer from the effects of this experiment?

A:

I still have a weak heart. For example, I am unable to walk very quickly now, and I also have to sweat very much. Exactly, those are the results, but in many cases I have had those afflictions ever since.

Q:

Were you in good physical condition before you were subjected to Malaria and Freezing experiments?

A:

Since the time of this starvation I weighed 57 kilograms in Dachau. When I came to the camp I weighed about one hundred kilo; I lost about one half of my weight. In the beginning, I was weighed, and I was in bed for about a week. And then my weight went down to forty-seven kilo.

Q:

How much do you weigh now, father?

A:

I can not tell you exactly but I have not weighed myself lately but I think at this time I weigh fifty-five kilogram.

Q:

Do you know how you were pre-warmed in these freezing experiments?

A:

I was warmed with these lamps, but I heard later that people were rewarmed by women.

Q:

Do you know approximately how many inmates were subjected to the freezing experiments?

A:

I can not tell you anything about this, because it was kept so secret; and because I was in there quite individually, and I was quite single during this experiment.

Q:

Do you know whether anyone died as a result of this experiment?

A:

I can not give you any information about that, either. I have not seen anybody. But it was said in camp that quite a number of people died there during this experiment.

lunes, 26 de agosto de 2013

LEON Leyson, one of the youngest survivors on the list drawn up by the remarkable factory owner, died this year, just a day after sending his memoirs for publication. Here we reveal his remarkable story.

In the autumn of 1965 Leon Leyson went to Los Angeles airport to meet a man he had not seen in 20 years.

Their last meeting had been in very different circumstances.

Back then Leon was Leib Lejzon, a scrawny boy of 15, so undersized that he had to stand on a box to reach the machinery in the factory where he worked.

The man he was meeting was his former employer and Leon – now 36 and 6ft tall – was not at all sure he would remember him.

But as soon as his eyes fell on Leon, Oskar Schindler smiled and said:

“You are Little Leyson,” his nickname for the youngest of the 1,100 Jews working in his factories – first in southern Poland and later at Brünnlitz in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.

Leon toiled for 12 hours a day on his box for three years. It was slave labour yet everyone there considered themselves lucky. The alternative, after all, was so much worse.

Schindler’s story became famous through Thomas Keneally’s book which Steven Spielberg made into the Oscar-winning film Schindler’s List, soon to be released in digitally remastered form.

But the story of Little Leyson, the youngest of the Schindlerjuden (Schindler’s Jews) has remained little known until now because he didn’t think people wanted to hear it. He could not have been more wrong. Leon’s memoir, The Boy On The Wooden Box, is an account both of unimaginable horror and extraordinary resilience.

Liam Neeson as Oskar in a scene from Schindler’s List

Leon, his parents Moshe and Chanah, his sister Pesza and brother David all survived the Holocaust because they were Schindlerjuden.

Two other brothers Hershel and Tsalig and around 100 other family members were not and perished.

Time and again Schindler not only saved Leon’s life but tried to make it less unbearable. Boys of Leon’s age were destined for the gas chambers yet Schindler gave him a job.

He gave instructions for “little Leyson” to receive double food rations.

He switched him from the night shift to the less taxing day shift and moved him to more challenging tasks to keep the boy stimulated.

“I am an unlikely survivor of the Holocaust,” Leon writes. “I had so much going against me and almost nothing going for me. I was just a boy. I had no connections. I had no skills. But I had one factor in my favour that trumped everything else: Oskar Schindler thought my life had value.”

Leon was born in 1929 in Narewka, a village in north-east Poland where homes had no running water and electricity did not arrive until 1935.

In 1938 the family relocated 350 miles south to the city of Krakow.

The German army reached Krakow on September 6, 1939, and within months the city’s Jews were forced into a ghetto. One day Moshe, a skilled machinist, was summoned to an enamelware factory where the new owner, a Nazi party member, needed a safe opening. Moshe cracked the safe and the factory owner hired him on the spot.

It would prove to be the saving of the family: the Nazi factory boss was Oskar Schindler.

In the film it is witnessing the brutal clearing of the Krakow ghetto that transforms Schindler.

In another scene Schindler dashes to the railway station to rescue his accountant Itzhak Stern who has been rounded up for deportation. What was not seen in the film was Schindler trying to pull Leon’s 17-year-old brother Tsalig off a train too. But Tsalig would not leave his girlfriend Miriam. Both perished.

With the ghetto emptied the remaining Jews of Krakow were transferred to what Leon calls “the innermost circle of hell” – Plaszow concentration camp.

As the Jews were marched through the Krakow streets Leon was shocked by the indifference of the gentile Poles.

“Had they not known what we had been suffering just a few blocks away?

How could they NOT have known?

How could they not have done something to help us?

They showed absolutely no interest in who we were, where we were going or why.

Our misery, our confinement and pain were irrelevant to their lives.”

In Plaszow life and death were at the whim of the psychotic commandant Amon Goeth. He used prisoners as target practice and once shot dead all the patients in the infirmary only minutes after Leon had left it.

Another time he was not so lucky. Goeth ordered him to be given 25 lashes with a leather whip for not shovelling snow fast enough. Leon had to count out the lashes and if he faltered the guard would start again.

“The moment I entered the gates of Plaszow, I was convinced I would never leave alive,” Leon wrote.

In late 1943 Schindler bribed Goeth into letting him build his own camp next to his enamelware works, arguing that it was more efficient than marching the workers two and a half miles each way.

To his dismay, Leon learned that his name had been crossed off the transfer list.

Risking instant execution Leon protested to a guard who, amazingly, let him through to join his parents.

Leon worked alongside his father and brother David in the factory.

Schindler often came down to the factory floor at night, the smell of cigarettes and cologne signalling his presence.

He would chat to the boy on the wooden box and point him out to visitors as a hard worker.

Sometimes he even invited Leon to his office.

“I had grown used to the fact that to Nazis I was just another Jew; my name didn’t matter. But Schindler clearly wanted to know who we were,”

Oskar Schindler, left, meeting Leon and his wife Lis in 1965

Leon writes, recounting how Schindler would put his hand on his father’s shoulder, saying: “It will be all right, Moshe.” Such basic humanity from a Nazi to a Jew made a deep impression on Leon.

With the Soviet army already in eastern Poland, Plaszow camp was to be closed and all inmates transferred to Auschwitz. But Schindler set about moving his factory to Brünnlitz in Czechoslovakia along with some of his workers.

But Leon, Moshe and David were not among them – until Leon stepped out of the line of prisoners just as Schindler strolled past.

His boldness earned him a blow from a guard’s rifle butt but it alerted Schindler who ordered Leon, Moshe and David to be pulled out.

Leon’s mother was not safe either.

The train carrying the female workers to Brünnlitz was diverted to Auschwitz.

I am an unlikely survivor of the Holocaust, but Oskar Schindler thought my life had value

Leon Leyson

Schindler bribed camp commanders to return them to him.

In April 1945 as the war in Europe neared its end, Schindler gave each of his workers a bottle of vodka and a bolt of cloth and bid them farewell.

Leon and his parents emigrated to California. Leon did military service in Korea and then taught industrial arts in the same high school for 37 years.

He married fellow teacher Lis in 1965 after a six-month romance and they had a son, a daughter and six grandchildren. His colleagues knew nothing of his past until a reporter tracked him down after the release of Schindler’s List.

After his story appeared he was invited to speak all over the US.

He also returned to Plaszow three times.

Sadly, Leon died aged 83 of a rare form of skin cancer in January this year, a day after delivering the manuscript for his memoir so it falls to Lis to speak for him now.

“Leon had no bitterness in him. He loved every day of his job and was thrilled to be drafted into military service for his adopted country. After his story became known he was sustained by the warmth people showed to him.”

lunes, 12 de agosto de 2013

Budapest: A 98-year-old Hungarian who topped the dwindling list of surviving Nazi war crimes suspects has died in hospital while awaiting trial for allegedly sending 12,000 Jews to the death camps.

Laszlo Csatari "died on Saturday morning. He had been treated for medical issues for some time but contracted pneumonia, from which he died," his lawyer Gabor Horvath told AFP today.

Csatari was alleged to have been a senior police officer actively involved in the deportations from the Jewish ghetto in Kassa, now known as Kosice in present-day Slovakia, during World War II.

After being sentenced to death in absentia by a Czechoslovakian court in 1948 he made it to Canada where he lived and worked as an art dealer before being stripped of his citizenship in the 1990s.

He returned to Hungary, where he lived undisturbed for some 15 years until prosecutors began investigating his case in late 2011 on the basis of information from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which put him at the top of its list of surviving alleged Nazi war criminals.

He was placed under house arrest in July 2012 and in June prosecutors charged him. They said that as commander of a collection and deportation camp in the Kassa ghetto he was "actively involved in and assisted the deportations" in 1944.

Csatari, also known as Csatary, "regularly beat the interned Jews with his bare hands and whipped them with a dog-whip," prosecutors said.

He also allegedly refused requests to cut windows into airless train wagons each transporting around 80 men, women and children to the gas chambers of Nazi-occupied Europe, mostly at the Auschwitz camp in Poland.

The Jewish population in and around Kassa had been crammed into the ghetto following the occupation of Hungary by German troops in 1944 after the country's dictator and former ally was deposed by Hitler.

The silver-haired Csatari denied committing war crimes in several hearings held behind closed doors, according to his lawyer.

The case was suspended on July 8 on grounds of double jeopardy, since Csatari has already been convicted of the charges presented.

Last week however a higher court ruled that proceedings could resume after the prosecutor successfully appealed the suspension.

Slovakia meanwhile had commuted the 1948 sentence to life imprisonment and authorities there issued a subpoena for him to attend a hearing last month, but he failed to show up.

A court in Kosice had been due to rule on September 26 where he should serve his sentence.

"We never believed that Csatary would live long enough to face justice on Earth," Lucia Kollarova, spokeswoman for the Federation of Slovak Jewish Communities, told AFP today.

In recent years, the authorities in Europe have made renewed efforts to bring to justice the small number of people still alive thought to have been involved in the Holocaust.

Most notable was Ukrainian-born former Sobibor guard John Demjanjuk, deported from the United States in 2009 and sentenced in Germany in 2011 to five years in prison for complicity in some 28,000 murders.

He died at a nursing home last year aged 91 while freed and awaiting an appeal.

The Demjanjuk verdict, stating that simply having worked at an extermination camp was enough to establish complicity in murder, set a legal precedent and Germany is now investigating around 50 suspected ex-Auschwitz guards.

German police in May arrested alleged former Auschwitz guard Hans Lipschis, 93, on charges of complicity in mass murder. Lipschis insists he only worked as a cook at the camp.

The Wiesenthal Center, the Los Angeles-based organisation named after the famous Nazi-hunting Holocaust survivor who died in 2005, estimates that only around 60 potential defendants are still alive.

Last month as part of its "Operation Last Chance" it hung around 2,000 posters in German towns and cities appealing to the public for information on the last perpetrators of the Holocaust still at large.

At least 10 suspected Nazi war criminals ordered deported by the United States never left the country, according to an Associated Press review of Justice Department data -- and four are living in the U.S. today. All remained eligible for public benefits such as Social Security until they exhausted appeals, and in one case even beyond.

Quiet American legal limbo was the fate of all 10 men uncovered in the AP review. The reason: While the U.S. wanted them out, no other country was willing to take them in.

Suspected Nazi war criminal Vladas Zajanckauskas gets to stay in his home in Sutton, Mass., because no other country was willing to take him.

That's currently the case of Vladas Zajanckauskas in Sutton, Massachusetts. It's the case of Theodor Szehinskyj in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Of Jakiw Palij in New York City. And of John Kalymon in Troy, Michigan.

All have been in the same areas for years, stripped of citizenship and ordered deported, yet able to carry out their lives in familiar surroundings. Dozens of other Nazi war crimes suspects in the U.S. were also entitled to Social Security and other public benefits for years as they fought deportation.

The United States can deport people over evidence of involvement in Nazi war crimes, but cannot put such people on trial because the alleged crimes did not take place on American soil. The responsibility to prosecute would lie with the countries where the crimes were committed or ordered -- if the suspects ever end up there.

In the 34 years since the Justice Department created an office to find and deport Nazi suspects, the agency has initiated legal proceedings against 137 people. Less than half -- at least 66 -- have been removed by deportation, extradition or voluntary departure.

At least 20 died while their cases were pending. In at least 20 other cases, U.S. officials agreed not to pursue or enforce deportation orders, often because of poor health, according to a 2008 report by the Justice Department. In some cases, the U.S. government agreed not to file deportation proceedings in exchange for cooperation in other investigations, the report said.

But the key stumbling block has been the lack of political will by countries in Europe to accept those ordered to leave.

"Without any doubt, the greatest single frustration has been our inability, in quite a number of cases now, to carry out the deportation orders that we've won in federal courts. We can't carry them out because governments of Europe refuse to take these people back," Eli Rosenbaum, the longtime head of the Justice Department agency charged with investigating accused Nazi war criminals, said in the 2011 documentary "Elusive Justice: The Search for Nazi War Criminals."

Justice officials declined to make Rosenbaum available for an interview.

The four men still living in the U.S. despite deportation orders have all exhausted appeals:

-- Zajanckauskas, 97, remains in Massachusetts 11 years after authorities first began the denaturalization process. He was ordered deported to his native Lithuania in 2007, and ran out of appeals in 2010 but remains in the U.S. because other countries, including Lithuania, won't accept him, Rosenbaum has said. Zajanckauskas took part in the "brutal liquidation" of the Warsaw Ghetto, according to Rosenbaum. Zajanckauskas, who didn't return a message from the AP, has denied being in Warsaw at the time.

-- Szehinskyj, 89, remains in Pennsylvania nearly 14 years after DOJ began a case against him. He was denaturalized and ordered deported to his native Ukraine, Poland or Germany, and exhausted all appeals in 2006. The Department of Justice has said no country has been willing to accept him. Authorities say Szehinskyj was an armed guard at Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Poland, a claim he has denied. Szehinskyj's attorney didn't return messages from the AP.

-- Palij, 89, remains in New York 11 years after the DOJ initiated a case against him and seven years after he exhausted appeals. Court records say Palij - born in a part of Poland that is now part of Ukraine- was an armed guard at an SS slave labor camp for Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland until at least the spring of 1943, and helped to keep prisoners from escaping. Palij has denied the accusations. The original order deporting Palij to Ukraine has been amended to allow deportation to Germany, Poland or any other country willing to accept him. Justice officials say none has been willing. A man who answered the phone at Palij's number had trouble hearing and could not carry out a phone conversation. A woman who answered the phone at the office of Palij's attorney said he does not speak to reporters.

-- Kalymon, 92, is still in Michigan despite exhausting appeals earlier this year in a process that took nine years. Prosecutors said Kalymon, who was born in Poland, was a member of the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian Auxiliary Police in Lviv, which rounded up Jews and imprisoned them. Prosecutors said Kalymon also shot Jews. He was ordered deported to Ukraine, Poland, Germany or any other country that would take him. His attorney, Elias Xenos, said his client was a teenage boy who was essentially guarding a sack of coal.

"That's not the government's position, of course. But they've run out of true persecutors, and they are trying to now prosecute people on the fringes," Xenos said.

He said he is not aware of any country that has agreed to take Kalymon, who he said has Alzheimer's disease and cancer.

In Poland, prosecutor Grzegorz Malisiewicz said an investigation of Kalymon was closed in January because authorities couldn't definitively tie him to crimes committed in 1942. In Germany, Munich prosecutors have been investigating Kalymon on suspicion of murder since 2010.

Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said many countries lack the political will to accept suspected Nazi criminals who have been ordered deported: "I don't think it's any lack of effort by the American government."

Germany has taken the position that people involved in Nazi crimes must be prosecuted, no matter how old or infirm, as it did in the case of retired Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk. He died last year at age 91 while appealing his conviction of being an accessory to 28,060 murders while a guard at the Sobibor death camp.

Before that case, Germany had been reluctant to prosecute Nazi war crimes suspects who weren't German citizens, said Stephen Paskey, a former Justice Department attorney who worked on the Demjanjuk and Zajanckauskas cases. Germany has also resisted accepting those who are ordered deported because, like other countries, it doesn't want to be seen as a refuge for those with Nazi pasts, the DOJ said.

The case of Johann Leprich fell into that category. Authorities said Leprich, of Clinton Township, Michigan, served as an armed guard at a Nazi camp in Austria during World War II. He was 78 when he was ordered deported in 2003. Germany, Hungary and Leprich's native Romania - which passed a law in 2002 barring the entry of war crimes suspects - all refused to accept him. A technical issue related to Leprich's deportation order allowed him to remain eligible for public benefits until he died in 2013, although for unclear reasons he stopped receiving them long before that.

According to AP's analysis of DOJ records, five other Nazi suspects were ordered deported but remained in the U.S. until they died because no country was willing to take them:

-- Osyp Firishchak, 93, of Chicago, died last November, nine months after exhausting appeals. A U.S. judge concluded that Firishchak had lied when he said he was not a member of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, which helped Nazis arrest Jews in large numbers and sent them to labor and death camps. He was born in territory that was then Czechoslovakia and is now part of the Ukraine. He was ordered deported to Ukraine in 2007.

-- Anton Tittjung, of Wisconsin, died last year at age 87. Born in a part of the former Yugoslavia that is now Croatia, he was accused of being an armed guard at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria and was ordered deported to Croatia in 1994. He said he was not a Nazi. He exhausted his appeals in 2001 but remained in the U.S. because Croatia would not accept him, saying he was neither born there nor a citizen of Croatia, according to a DOJ report. The U.S. also asked Austria and Germany to accept him; both refused.

-- Mykola Wasylyk spent most of his American years in the Catskills region, 90 miles north of New York City, and died in North Port, Florida, in 2010 at age 86. He exhausted his appeals in 2004. He was born in former Polish territory that is now part of Ukraine. Prosecutors say he was an armed guard at two forced labor camps in Nazi-occupied Poland, but he claimed he was unaware that prisoners there were persecuted. The United States ordered him deported to Ukraine. At Wasylyk's request, the DOJ amended the order to seek to deport him first to Switzerland. Neither country took him in.

-- Michael Negele, died in St. Peters, Missouri, in 2008 at age 87. He was ordered deported to his native Romania or to Germany in 2003, and he exhausted appeals in June 2004. Neither country was willing to take him, the DOJ said. Negele was accused of being an armed guard and dog handler at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany, and later at the Theresienstadt Jewish ghetto in what is now the Czech Republic. Negele had argued he was not involved in any wartime atrocities.

-- Bronislaw Hajda, died in Schiller Park, Illinois, in 2005 at age 80. He was ordered deported to his native Poland or Germany in 1998, and his appeals process ended in 2001. But both countries repeatedly refused to accept him, authorities said. He was accused of participating in a massacre of Jews at a Nazi slave labor camp. Hajda had denied the allegations and said he never killed anyone.

Leading Holocaust experts express frustration at the failure to remove such men from the United States.

"That they have been able to live out their lives enjoying the freedoms of this country, after depriving others of freedom and life itself, is an affront to the memory of those who perished," said Paul Shapiro, director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

The reluctance of countries to accept suspected Nazi collaborators could become a factor in the case of Michael Karkoc, a Minnesota man identified in an AP investigation last month as a commander in a Nazi SS-led unit accused of massacres.

Both German and Polish prosecutors are investigating whether there is enough evidence to bring charges against Karkoc, 94, and seek extradition. If neither country decides to charge Karkoc, U.S. officials may try to hold him accountable through separate civil proceedings that would strip him of his citizenship and seek to have him deported. In that event, the U.S. would need to find a country that would take him in - and the earlier cases suggest that may prove difficult.

"No one is obligated to take him unless he is charged," Paskey said. "Ukraine wouldn't have to take him. No one else would want him."

The AP investigation revealed that Karkoc lied to American immigration officials to enter the United States after the war, saying he had no military experience and concealing his work as an officer and founding member of the SS-led Ukrainian Self Defense Legion. Records don't show Karkoc had a direct hand in wartime atrocities, but the evidence shows that he had command responsibility over a unit that massacred Polish civilians.

Karkoc's family claims he was never involved in Nazi war crimes. Justice officials would not confirm whether the U.S. is investigating Karkoc.

Paskey said the U.S. could have a good denaturalization case against Karkoc, because prosecutors wouldn't have to prove he had a direct hand in war crimes. But the quickest - and perhaps only - way to remove him from the U.S. would be if he is charged criminally.

"Unless Poland or Germany decides to prosecute him," Paskey said, "he is likely to die in the United States."